[mytec]

This is exactly why I played World of Warcraft so much. I used it as an escape from my problems in life. One day I realized I achieve more with my character than I do in my own life. That was a huge turning point that made me deal with my various life problems.

[cdelsolar]

I mean isn't this true of any game? At night I can race across abandoned mines with 11 other people around the world, fight pink blobs at the Fountain of Dreams and adventure across medieval lands with mithril swords. I don't do any of this in real life.

[jerf]

With WoW, you can end up doing things like "running a guild" that is not entirely dissimilar from "running a business or an office of a business" and training up other real skills that are valuable to real business. I can well believe there's some people who just sort of slid into doing that sort of thing, and one day had the revelation that if they can do this, they must be more capable than various other elements of their life had been telling them they were.

I'm not sure I'd recommend it as a path to explicitly seek out per se, but if it's one you're already walking, it's a great thing to realize and be empowered by.

[salawat]

This is part of what finally broke my gaming habit actually.

The other part was a resentment at constantly having things changed out from under you as a player.

After a certain point, I realized I could probably put a bit more effort into making my mark on the real world, where at least I had the satisfaction of knowing I'd accomplished something that wouldn't disappear just because some 0's and 1's got jumbled.